Dinosaur Architects

[David Turner]

Does anybody else have client architects who insist on drawing by hand?

I can appreciate the art and craft of creating hand drawings, but for working architectural drawings, hand drawings are really inefficient and a freaking pain to work with.

 

Modeling from them seems to take twice as long and accuracy suffers as well.

I can't imagine being a consultant/sub on a project and having to deal with hand drawings.

I have one client who does hand drawings, but I give him a pass since he is 86 years old! The other architects are much younger, but still insist on creating hand drawings even if they came of age in the time of AutoCAD.

 

Anyway, I just thought I would vent and see if anyone else has similar thoughts and experiences.

Thank you for your time.

-DT

[James Vella]

ha! I feel your pain David.

 

I once had a client come in and he had hand drawn this large mansion and it was an absolute nightmare to work with - atleast he was a really entertaining guy and we got along well. That made communication at least a lot easier as he could take a joke when it came to how difficult things were to interpret (is this a chimney or a bunch of match sticks?). After a week of babbling about I got a render together and sent him an email. 1 Week goes by, I hear nothing, 2nd Week is almost over, so I send another email - "did you get my rendering?". His secretary tells me "yes, you should get something in the mail next week". In the mail I thought?... Then I thought nothing of it until next week.

 

Next week comes, "James, you have a post you need to sign for", a what? In 2 years at this company I never received a snail mail message from a client, or anyone for that fact (besides hardware deliveries)... I open it and lo and behold, he had printed my render at A0, and he had cut out of magazines perspectives that matched exactly the angle I was working on with pieces of architecture, moldings, tile types etc everything you could think of, he had sticky taped them so you could fold them back over the pieces on my render as a before/after - they were meticulously placed so that the line of guttering would match perfectly to the line on the magazine snippet. I almost fell off my chair, I will never forget that. Sure I didn't have profiles to match the moldings sent through (and some of them were very fancy - and every 3rd set of windows had different modlings) but the fact he put so much work into it made me enjoy the process a little more than your typical piece of crap scribbled on a napkin

[damienaleksandr]

In my practice there was a case when the employer liked my manual work and he asked to do a manual pitch, it was a long time ago, about 1995 year. At this time I worked with pencils and a rapidogram dreamed that for example the sky, for me, a computer - for too long and it was unpleasant to shade it. But at that time computers have not yet entered everyday life, but now the sky on the computer is done in a minute. But in life, if you are given one, then another is selected. I can tell about this in the next post. But to continue, I would like to know an David Turner - architect by profession or as a visualizer com James Vella?

[Francisco Penaloza]

I used to have a client that send me the actual blueprints and also Magazines cut out for furniture and fabrics. Modeling from those blueprints was a pain, I didn't have space on my old house to unroll the whole thing and not cover my monitor LOL.

 

Now I still have designers than rather sketch by hand and I take it from there, sometimes I scan and model in the top of those sketches.

 

Not too long ago I have someone who colored sketch by hand and told me to match exactly 'those colors'... Then I ask, what colors? the one you paint with? the one you see after scanning or the one you see after painting, scanning and printing to send it to me??

As Charlie Brown said, "good grief"...

[Scott Schroeder]

There really should be no difference working with a hand drawing and a CAD drawing, as long as you have a to-scale copy of the hand drawing and they didn't screw up the scan. Sure you don't have your snaps but there are tools like miauu's polyline pro that help you out a lot, http://miauumaxscript.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

 

If they are just doing layouts, then a hand sketch will always be faster than doing it in the computer. Plus your paper and pencil don't need to have their battery recharged and it doesn't need a wifi signal. Architects can be on the road a lot and paper and pencil are tools that are going to work no matter if you are in some crappy hotel or 35,000 in the air on a plane.

 

It's 50/50 where I work if I'm working with hand sketches or cad linework, so I guess I've just gotten used to it and I've found tools like polyline pro to make my life easier.

 

Now, if they are doing final construction docs by hand, then yeah, get with the times!

[heni30]

In the beginning, instead of trying to pin down every detail, I interpret instructions very quickly and don't worry about anything in order to create a quick rough draft.

 

Then, at that point, the client can make concrete comments about adjustments.

 

Agonizing about uncertainties in the beginning can be an unnecessary drain of energy.

[M V]

A good artist should be able to work from anything they are given. Napkin to full BIM model. I almost rather work from the napkin sketch honestly.

[Lewis Garrison]

If I were a General Contractor having to build the space this would be a huge pain in the ass. But as a 3D artist there's nothing wrong with receiving hand sketches at all. If the goal is a static 3D view, many of the inaccuracies are to small to notice and if they are, the Architect can usually inform you of them during revisions.

[Joel Gray]

I agree! If you know basic architectural detailing and dimensions (if not get a copy of Architectural Graphic Standards) then modeling from a hand sketch can be quite liberating and enjoyable... and fast!

[David Turner]

As I stated earlier, I understand the appreciation of hand drawings. My earliest architectural training was creating architectural drawings by hand and having a fine art background, I really enjoyed creating them.

 

I have a pretty accurate and relatively speedy workflow when working with hand drawings.

However, all scanned drawings are distorted and when a 36" x 42" sheet is scanned the distortion can be significant. Also, even at high resolution, the line work can be quite pixelated, so accuracy can be difficult to achieve. Not all of the time are details included in a hand drawing set, typically because the architect hasn't gotten to them yet (because it's an entirely separate drawing that needs to be created).

So, when I am modeling window mullions and I have to determined if the grainy lines represent a 2" or 3" dimension (oh, there's no window schedule...that's another separate drawing yet to be created) I make my best guess only to have feedback from the architect stating that the mullions are the wrong dimension. So the back and forth takes time and can delay delivery of the rendering.

 

On the other hand, I also have received very conceptual hand drawings where precision and accuracy were so important as conveying the overall design. My experience in these instances has been quite enjoyable (similar to my work experience in the video game industry as a 3-D environment artist).

 

Most of the hand drawings that I have dealt with were indeed construction documents. This still surprises me.

My experience working in-house, in even a small architecture firm, things were so fast-paced that dealing with hand drawings would never fly.

I know one of my clients is a sole practitioner (I envision Mike Brady at his drafting table) so maybe that makes sense on a business practice level. Although it didn't help the civil engineer on a recent project where he re-drew the site survey and erred by 10'-0".

 

Anyway, I guess my point was that it's surprising to me that in this tech-heavy industry, some individuals choose to practice in a retrograde fashion. Yes, hand drawings have their artisan charm, but when you need to share the information that you are generating with other parties, you might want to be using more recent industry standards and techniques that the other parties are using as well.

Just imagine attempting to achieve a high-resolution, photo-real rendering using antiquated hardware, 3d Studio R3 and how that would affect your productivity.

The end.

[Joel Gray]

We're on the same page, David. The older people get the more they resist change - myself included. When I started in this industry, the guys using graphite and vellum were the "dinosaurs," now I'm the "dinosaur" because I know AutoCAD and didn't have any need or desire to learn Revit. And in other circles, 80s music is playing on the oldies station now! [face palm!]

[Chris MacDonald]

I'm working on a job that I quoted for assuming I'd be provided everything in CAD after the architect said he'd forward me the site plan in CAD.

 

Never assume. Everything else was scale drawings. I forgot how time consuming they can be and just how much we take CAD data for granted.

[Robert Lamp]

Haha, I'm too young for such operations.

I can't even imagine the process of hand drawing. Should be really painful and so long!

[Lewis Garrison]

Makes me wonder how many talented 3D artists out there couldn't do a simple hand sketch if their life depended on it.

[Joel Gray]

Makes me wonder how many talented 3D artists out there couldn't do a simple hand sketch if their life depended on it.

 

Quite a lot I would imagine, based on the number of architects I know that can't or won't draw without some form of CAD (even "redlines").

[dmitriikarpovich]

Sorry guys, but the CAD in some cases just a mess Will better draw this by hand

[damienaleksandr]

Is it possible to include Le Corbusier in the category of architects - dinosaurs?